While at a Cold Pavement networking event this week I learned about two in
teresting bits of technology, the first a little gadget you carry with you (think kitschy USB Flash Drive), it has all your contact/social media info on it and when you find someone has another little gadget you bump them together and tada, next time you plug into your computer all of their social networking information is downloaded and you are friends with them across all platforms!
Cool right….?
Well maybe not so much when I reveal the second thing I learned about that night, Microsoft Tag! While I had heard of Microsoft Tag before and seen types of tags used with Microsoft Surface, I did not really understand how awesome Tag was until I met a gentleman from Waggener Edstrom working on the MSFT Tag account (oh those PR folks!)… I investigated Tag more carefully the next day at work and am super stoked on it now!
What it is: A Tag which you can scan from your mobile phone for instant access to information, websites, videos, reviews, and more.
Why you want this for networking and professional development purposes: First you can use it in a similar function as our kikimo friend above without carrying around a toy. You can save a picture of your tag on your phone, put it on your business card or a resume and the people you meet can simply scan it with their phone to get all your contact info downloaded on their phone (vcard option)! Or you can have your tag take them to a site such as a personal blog or LinkedIn page (url option)!
The marketing uses for this are also exciting, but somewhat obvious, so read about them elsewhere.
The process to get the app on your phone takes about 2 minutes and to setup your own free Tag takes about 1 minute. The Tag can then be downloaded as a pdf or jpg and used on just about anything!
All you need to go is go to the Microsoft Tag Website to get started.
One thing I am debating on right now is what I want the Tag on my resume to link to, if it is just to my LinkedIn then I could have just put a hyperlink… but if I set it to download my contact card that a little weird because a random person looking at my resume might not want to store all my info in their phone. I am leaning towards and aggregate site that has my twitter/blog/LinkedIn on it… wait my LinkedIn is that aggregate site!
Perhaps every medium, ie my resume, is not meant for a Microsoft Tag? Thoughts? Perhaps a text tag with my mission statement, which would otherwise take up a lot of room on a resume?
All 3 of these are different kinds of Tags, scan each!
What uses have you seen for the Microsoft Tag, what would you link your Tag to and what other tools have you seen to capture contacts while networking!?
Ravi
June 28, 2010
Nice Blog! it really is awesome
Kim
June 29, 2010
These are both really cool, especially MS Tag. Thanks for sharing, Jordan!
Ryan
June 30, 2010
Thanks for sharing Jordan! These tags really do seem like the wave of the future!